The church of Santa Chiara is a church in Trani from the early fourteenth century. It was originally dedicated to Saints Agnes and Paul, but was later commonly called Santa Chiara because the adjoining monastery housed the Poor Clares, who in 1599 moved to the convent of San Giovanni and were replaced by Benedictine nuns.
What to see
The church has undergone various alterations while keeping its original features; inside is the canvas of the Madonna delle Grazie by the Neapolitan painter Fabrizio Santafede. In the seventeenth century the transept was enlarged and the altars of the nave chapels and the high altar were made, with the related paintings and the altarpiece; the presbytery is of more recent date. The complex is a monument built in different periods, between the fourteenth century and the early twentieth, with buildings of different styles superimposed or set side by side: not homogeneous, but interesting for the multiplicity of its aspects. The adjoining monastery was offered by a great merchant company linked to the Medici of Florence; the Poor Clares, mostly from old noble families of Trani, had chosen a site just outside the walls, far from the din, but in the sixteenth century, with population growth, the monastery was absorbed within the walls and the community had to make the church available to the faithful of the new district. In the eighteenth century the vast properties, together with donations and bequests, allowed the monastery to grant many loans, giving it a dominant role in the socio-economic life of the city.
In 1904 most of the monastery's rooms were ceded to the Comune, on condition that they be used only for educational or charitable purposes; restored, it is now a primary school named after Gabriele d'Annunzio. In 1909 the church became a parish church under the title of Saints Agnes and Paul; in 1928 the Comune ceded the rooms for the new central apse, and in 1987 the church and the parish took back the original name of Santa Chiara. In the restoration of 2004, removing the cement tiles of the sixties, the fourteenth-century walls of the convent came to light, demolished between 1928 and 1930, the base of a portico, a domed chamber that must have been a burial chamber and some bell-shaped cisterns, with the mouth a metre and a half below street level and up to nine metres deep; the excavations carried out from 2004 to 2009 also brought to light bones of small animals, terracotta shards, small amphorae, stones with friezes and even a skull.
Visiting
The church is in Trani, and the complex can still be seen on via Pedaggio Santa Chiara. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
The name of via Pedaggio Santa Chiara comes from the toll paid at the nearby western gate of the city, near which the monastery stood.
